48 comments:

I hate cutesy Brit articles with measurements like "stone." Give me pounds or kilograms, one or the other, for heaven's sake. I can convert those back and forth. By the way, Bing told me that 1 stone = 14 pounds, so our adipose-enhanced heroine weighs 644 pounds, +/- 7 if they rounded off to the nearest stone.

What do you figure the over/under is for the life expectancy of someone that obese? 45? 50?

There's that strict confining word should; it crops up even in this free-spirited woman's speech. I take it she doesn't like hearing that word from others (you should eat less, you should want to live at least long enough to see your kids grow up) but she can't help using it herself.

Her last name made me think of Homer Simpson. Though even in that one episode where Homer was striving to become heavy enough to get disability status and work from home, his weight-gaining goals were a lot more modest.

Since she is such an obese pig, her life span is definitely going to be limited and her medical care is going to be very expensive, (not to mention the moving costs of hoisting her lardness out of her home when the time comes)......I wonder if the doctors she sees are badgering her to fill out an end of life directive so that the government can withold care from her and save some money.

Nah. That is only for hard working seniors who have paid into Medicare all their lives.

As was written here earlier, now that we pay for that lard ass's medical expenses, her choices, which lead to medical expenses (30 doctors to deliver her child!?!?) are being paid for by the rest of us, well, those of us who pay taxes.

That's why it is our concern, and why we will have the government intercede on our behalf. You cannot have too much government when it comes to personal decisions.

Since she is such an obese pig, her life span is definitely going to be limited

Yea, like living with you finger-wagging nannies - who rarely, if ever, engage in any public self-criticism (what are your vices the rest of us can harp on?) - makes anyone want to live longer. Along with turning the enjoyable dinner plate into a depressing medicine cabinet, your open hypocrisy (as usual) is what's hilarious - and damning.

She makes it seem like it's a lot of work to get fat. This is encouraging to those of us who would like to lose a few pounds. Think of getting thin as being *lazy." It's so much work to eat a lot, etc. etc.

Just a mental image to use, not because it's really true, but just because it might work. Ugh! It's too much trouble to stuff all that in my mouth, chew, swallow, endure the digestive process... blech!

The article said she was "plus size" at 10 stone. That's 140 pounds. She's 5'2". When I was 140 pounds at 5'2" I could wear a size 10-12 which is definitely not plus sized. It's time for me to lose weight and get back there again if not slightly smaller.

I wonder if she even tastes the food as she shoves it into her corpulent body. What a hell of a life to be paid to eat just for the sake of eating, and not to savor what you eat because you have a quota to make.

- makes anyone want to live longer. Along with turning the enjoyable dinner plate into a depressing medicine cabinet, your open hypocrisy (as usual) is what's hilarious - and damning.

"I" was pointing out the hypocrisy of people getting upset by the government instituting rationing through mandatory end of life counseling to end people's lives early so that the government can save money.

While....at the same time it seems to be perfectly OK, with even some of those same people, that this woman will be relying on tax payers/government money for HER end game of expensive medical care for a condition that is completely self inflicted.

Hypocrisy indeed and it isn't mine.

If rationing of medical care is good for one group (seniors) why isn't it good for ALL? Especially for this woman who has perverted her life and inflicted upon herself debilitating medical conditions.

Or do we only want to ration medical care and encourage the death of selected groups?

The perversity of the human animal staggers the mind. That someone on earth should have acquired the ambition of being the world's fattest woman is sufficiently strange. That she can find a husband to love and support her in the pursuit of that goal is stranger still. That there is an audience that wants to pay money to watch her eat her way towards infinity is strange beyond measure. She truly lives in a dimension different than our own.....Is there any market for the world's laziest man? I think I could be competitive in that field.

The thing about overeating at the holidays, as you know, is giving in to temptation that otherwise is not around. That is what people feel guilty about, being sensible throughout the year and then stuffing their pie-holes just because Jane brought in a plate of cookies. This woman is not doing that. She's shoveling the most deplorable food imaginable.

There I was standing in front of a table of pies, minding my own business, marveling at the artistry of it all, deciding on which one I would try.

The heaviest guy there yells the distance of the room so now everybody's attention is focused, "JUST MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MIND ALREADY!" He rarely speaks to me so this was a surprising jolt. So I did make up my mind. A single piece of cherry pie. I noticed the heavy guy's plate, because now everybody is noticing who did the yelling at whom and for what, and why that was funny. His plate was stacked to an impressive elevation. The food arranged not in separate units but rather into an amalgamation. He devoured that then repeated it. (My own plate was finished. No two items had touched on the plate, each item discrete as if it had been a TV dinner tray. And there was only one of those.)

Then the guy gets up to graze the dessert table. He reassembled a whole pie on a fresh plate from whole slices of separate pies. Not sample slices, whole slices. Following that, he got up and reconstructed another whole pie on the same plate on top of the crumbs of the previous reconstructed pie. That's two entire pies.

All this I would not have noticed had he not been compelled to bark on the slowness of my own deciding. So there you have it, pigging out because it's there, and because it's pretty, not out of an appreciation for great food or because one is actually hungry, as I am, come to think of it, at this very moment.

I wonder if she even tastes the food as she shoves it into her corpulent body.

As a former waitress, one thing that I have definitely noticed is that fat people (not overweight, but truely obese) are very rarely food lovers. Like Chip said, there's no savoring or delighting there. They always gave me the impression that they were angry at me for daring to present the offensive food to them, and forcing them to eat it.

Kensington -- speaking from personal knowledge, the cost of bariatric medical treatment is exploding on every front. Dealing with the morbidly obese requires specialized EVERYTHING, from reinforced beds, to supersized MRI and CAT scan equipment, to xray devices capable of dealing with 800 to 1000 lbs of immobile flesh. Bariatric patients require squadrons of nurses and aides just to move them in bed, wash them and keep them clean. They need special sized everything in surgery, from clamps to scalpels, to breathing equipment. Every time a bariatric patient at home has a back pain, chest pains, shortness of breath (a fixture of massive obesity) they call 911 becaue these people can't just pick up and get themselves to a doctor or an ER -- and that takes a bariatric ambulance and one or more fire crews to get them into and out of the ambulance, and onto the special bed in the ER, with the specialized breathing and exam equipment. And the major cause of injuries to EMTs and nursing staff? Lifting and moving injuries. I run rescue, and my crew happens to operate the only bariatric truck in my city: I know whereof I speak. These people are a true disaster for the medical system -- they aren't harming just themselves and their families.

But, Megaera, you're writing about 800-1,000 pound people. Even with an obesity epidemic, how many such people are there, really?

As you said, you drive the only bariatric truck in your city, so don't you think your experience is going to be a bit skewed?

And I think you're also probably underestimating the number of morbidly obese people who are likely to be somewhat fatalistic and unlikely to actually call anyone when they are short of breath or having some chest pains.

Lots of really fat people don't like doctors or hospitals and many are likely to just toughen things out alone.

On the other hand, my 78 year old loves going to the doctor and insists on going whenever he isn't feeling exactly 100% for more than five minutes, even if he can't articulate what has driven him down to 96% and the doctor inevitably has nothing to offer him.

Kensington: I live in a city of about 100,000; the surrounding county has its own unit, as does the interhospital transport system run locally for our three hospitals. And the definition of bariatric begins, depending on the height and sex of the patient, at about 400-plus pounds.

How many of these people are there? Try noticing sometime the number of people riding carts around in Walmart, who aren't actually physically disabled in the musculo-skeletal issue or breathing disorder sense. Count them. Think about the fact that you didn't see those carts with the very large people riding them, until fairly recently, and look at the numbers they represent.

You'll have to take my word for it, I'm not doing any misunderestimating with regard to the population of The Large at Large. I'm one of the ones who has to go and pick them up when they fall, because they can't get up by themselves and their family and friends can't get them up either, so they call us. It's a freebie, btw, called "lifting assistance" on the books, but we get bitched at by the callers if we don't get there running lights and sirens. And "suffering in silence"? Oh, come now. These people don't live alone, because they can't function alone: they have families who enable them (do you really think this woman made that maasive meal herself? Carried two turkeys to the table? I assure you, she can barely carry herself) And if the person himself doesn't call because he's feeling bad, someone in the family does. Sorry if this sounds unsympathetic, but on this point my experience trumps your guesses.

I had two bariatric calls on one shift last week: one for a 700 lb man with a heart condition who I've run three times this year already, and that doesn't count the times other crews have run him or other houses have been called and used our truck. Each time it's taken an ambulance crew and two fire truck crews to get him out of his bed, loaded, out of the house, winched into the truck, and unloaded at the hospital. The second was a newbie, 500 lbs, whose girlfried called because he was experiencing back pain. It wasn't flagged as a bariatric call so we answered as a regular 911 in the duty unit, walked in the door and were greeted by him cheerily announcing that "They usually bring the wide stretcher for me -- I don't think you can take me on that (THAT being the regular cot, which is not rated for above 450 lbs). This one took another ambulance crew (to bring the bariatric unit around) plus a fire crew to help with the lifting. He'd just come, btw, per his girlfriend, from a Christmas party, where he'd consumed three full plates of goodies.

The medical system long since adapted to the needs of geriatrics, and they offer no particular surprises. Bariatrics are continual new demands as their numbers increase -- and make no mistake, they do. Everything has to be supersized, from emergency splints, to backboards, to hypodermic needles and IV catheters, to surgical equipment and everything for life support. When your little lady here gets up to her desired 1000 lb she won't be able to get out of bed, much less stand unaided; she'll be unable to turn herself or use a bedpan unassisted; she'll have bedsores you can put a fist in unless she has 24 hour skilled (and very strong) nursing, not to mention kidney, heart and lung problems that will move her in and out of the hospital on a regular basis, putting people like my crews at risk every time it happens. And she's strong, and she could easily last into her 50s or 60s, at a hospitalization once every month or two, not just a doctor visit.

I run your 78 year old, or his/her like, on a regular basis too: not nearly the systemic problem.

My apologies for the double post. Did want to add, just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are virtually NO stoics when it comes to chest pain or difficulty breathing. Those are genuine harbingers of death, and even the suicidal usually opt for treatment, because they want to go out in their own way, it their own time. Large people are no exception to this rule: why would you think they would be?